Creating & Editing Files with pico

Although it’s easy to use a GUI text editor in Mac OS X, it’s a good idea to know a little about Unix text editors and how they work. This way, if you ever find yourself sitting in front of a Unix system, you’ll have a chance at making it usable.

Unix offers a number of text editors: the easy-to-use pico, the ever-present vi, and the geek-favorite emacs. Which one you use is a personal decision: Each has strengths and weaknesses. It is far beyond the scope of this chapter (or book) to help you master any one of these, let alone all three. Because pico is the easiest Unix text editor to use, I’ll introduce it here.